Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana

📍Ōrākeinui homestead, Rātana Pā, Rangitīkei, Manawatū-Whanganui, New Zealand

“I was a farmer here at Ōrākeinui, my family's homestead, when on the eighth of November 1918 I stood on my own veranda and watched a cloud come in off the Tasman Sea toward the house. It rose from the water, covered me, and filled me with the Holy Spirit. A voice told me to turn the Māori people to God and to unite them — Te Māngai, the Mouthpiece, they would call me. My people were broken then by war and by the great influenza, and the vision called me to heal them. From this small farmhouse and this stretch of Rangitīkei earth a whole movement was born: tens of thousands came to Rātana Pā to be made well and to believe. We raised a temple, we entered Parliament, we carried the morehu — the remnant — into a new age. It began on a veranda, with a cloud, at home.”

Sources: teara.govt.nz — Wikipedia: T. W. Rātana